


How William Johnson Met The Local Drunkard

by UnkownAuthor



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Crack, Drabble, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Funny, M/M, Meme, Mild Sexual Content, Multi, One Shot, Templars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 07:47:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14588358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnkownAuthor/pseuds/UnkownAuthor
Summary: Title says all.





	How William Johnson Met The Local Drunkard

The first time William met Thomas Hickey, Hickey was being fucked (very vigourously and enthusiastically) by a young lady with her skirts up around her hips and one of her stockings tied around Thomas’s wrists.

“You’re lovely, you are,” Hickey said, and then, “Oh, hullo. Not you, but you’re not bad, either.”

“Pardon me,” William said, and closed the door.

The second time William met Thomas Hickey, Hickey was once again being fucked, this time by a no less enthusiastic blacksmith (his profession evident not only from the definition of his musculature as he held Thomas down over a table, but also by the apron still hanging crookedly from his hips).

“Wait your turn,” Hickey said cheerfully.

“Pardon me,” William said, once again, and closed the door.

The third time William met Thomas Hickey, Hickey was caught between two bodies in bed, and though William could not discern exactly whose limbs belonged to who, it was unlikely that they were merely attempting to change the bedsheets through extremely unorthodox means. 

“Come to join the party?” Hickey said, lifting a hand from the tangle in greeting.

“Pardon me,” William said, and didn’t bother to close the door, and definitely didn’t think about the invitation later.

(William thought that he ought to know better at this point. Unfortunately, all roads in the colonies, at least those for unusual requests, led not to Rome, but, in some especially stubborn twist of cruel fate, to Thomas Hickey. William would have been impressed, if he wasn’t begging his contact to know if there was anyone—anyone, up to and including particularly communicative beasts—else that he could do business with.)

The fourth time William met Thomas Hickey, Hickey was fully clothed and not currently fucking anyone nor being fucked, which made William wonder for a moment if, statistically speaking, he had managed to hit only behavioural outliers in his previous encounters. Somehow, he doubted it.

“You look damned familiar,” Hickey said, arranging his face into a frown of deep concentration in a manner that suggested that every facial muscle had to be awoken out of its drunken stupor with the most infinite reluctance. “Have we met?”

“I’ve just got one of those faces, perhaps,” William said, sitting down and angling his chair such that the cross-breeze from the window wafted away enough of the alcohol-laden air that he didn’t accomplish immediate intoxication through mere proximity.

“Ahh, maybe,” Hickey said. He shrugged, but there was a curl to his smirk that says that perhaps, he did remember, and that perhaps there was a reason that the man seemed to be connected to every person in the colonies in three degrees or less. Aside from the obvious paternity issues and possible venereal diseases.

When William pushed a list of items across the table—nothing exceptionally outrageous, but all things that would normally take a few months, on the inside, to obtain from England—Hickey squinted at it, mouthing the words, and then flicked the paper back at him.

“Would you like to keep it as a reminder? You seem to be a busy man,” William offered, but Hickey, either blissfully obvious to the implied message or far too used to single-entendres, shook his head. 

“Got it all riiiight here,” he said, tapping his temple and then spreading his hands for dramatic effect. (A feat which William thought would have resulted in Hickey toppling over, but the man seemed to operate on an particularly adaptable internal gyroscope.) “Don’t you worry your pretty head, Mr. Johnson, it’s safe as houses.”

Needless to say, William was not especially comforted by this assurance when it was accompanied with a prompt, heartfelt reunion with a new mug of ale and no immediate evidence that there was work afoot, and resigned himself to receiving an partial selection of items only tenuously related to the initial list. 

A week later, however, he got a message through a convoluted series of contacts that said that his items were ready for him, if he so wished. (“That’s unusually quick for him, too,” his landlady said as she passed on the message when she brought up his afternoon tea. “You must be quite the charmer, Mr. Johnson.” William wasn’t sure if this was a compliment or professional envy, considering that he was reasonably sure that she was running some sort of china-smuggling ring.)

“Threw in a tea cosy and a salt cellar as an added bonus,” Hickey said proudly when William sat down in the same grungy tavern. “A first-time customer kind of thing.”

“Thank... you?” William said, cradling the cosy-wrapped cellar in the crook of his arm and trying not to think too hard about their provenance. 

“You’re quite welcome, Mr. Johnson,” Hickey said, bowing ostentatiously over the table in a way that gave William concern for his balance again. 

The salt cellar was possibly the ugliest thing that William has ever had the unfortunate chance of possessing, a monstrosity with an exuberance of cherubs and roses spilling over its sides, but it sat on his desk long enough that he started keeping his sealing wax in it to justify its presence; nonetheless, he made it clear that he did not need extra items when he next met Hickey. The man seemed to take that as a challenge, if anything, and William’s landlady began to look forward to the reliable appearance of ever more outlandish items that William had to pass on to her. 

(Hickey, perhaps, was a little like the ugly saltcellar that sat on your desk for a very long time and persisted in being useful in unexpected ways that, in time, wore you down and made you bizarrely fond of it, while still being conscious of the fact that it was still an exceptionally ugly salt cellar.)


End file.
